Boyle and The Spring of Air
Guide || Debate || Web Excursions || Hub 

Outline

  • Prep: From Mining Pumps to the "Air Pump"
  • Who was Robert Boyle?
    =====
  • "News"
  • Discussion: Boyle's experimental conclusions
  • Contemporary Criticism & Debate
  • Epilog: The Rise of Scientific Institutions

    VISUALS
      From Mining Pumps
      Galileo at Arcetri [IMSS &]
    1. mining (Agricola, De re Metallica, 1542)
      Biringuccio's Pirotechnia
      pumping water from mines (Agricola, De re Metallica, 1542)
    2. Simon Stevin and the hydrostatic paradox
    3. Torricelli and "his" tube
    4. Marin Mersenne & Blaise Pascal and the Puy de Dome [Iowa Inst. of Hydraulic Research, Univ. of Iowa]
    5. Pascal on air pressure(1663) [Iowa Inst. of Hydraulic Research, Univ. of Iowa]
    6. literally, a "sea" of air [Iowa Inst. of Hydraulic Research, Univ. of Iowa]
    7. Torricelli tubes
    8. Lismore Castle
    9. Robert Boyle
      effluvia
      nitre
      Madgeburg spheres
      Robert Hooke
    10. Boyle's "air pump"

      The Rise of Scientific Institutions

    11. Leonardo da Vinci [Liber Liber, Italy] and one of his artillery inventions
      alchemist and hermetic philosophy
    12. Jean Batista Della Porta
    13. William Gilbert
      Tycho Brahe and Uranibourg
    14. Accademia dei Lincei
    15. correspondence networks: Marin Mersenne and Fabri Peiresc, w/ letter from Galileo [Michael John Gorman, Stanford]
    16. Philosophical College John Wilkins and John Wallis [The Media Drome]
    17. Accademia del Cimento [coat of arms, Ugo Schiff] [Gaspero Martellini, 'Una riunione dell'Accademia del Cimento', Florence, IMSS]
    18. Royal Society [Thomas Sprat's History (1667)]
    19. early proceedings
    20. French Academie des Sciences imagined visit by Louis XIV

    21. Debaters: Robert Boyle, Christian Huygens & Otto Guericke
    22. Thomas Hobbes
    23. Boyle's data: condensation
    24. Boyle's data: rarefaction

    25. Thomas Shadwell

    Return to HSCI 1814 Hub